The speech, which she delivered to a packed audience of her fellow Conservative Party members in Manchester, started reasonably well — until a prankster approached the stage. The man handed the leader of the United Kingdom a P-45 form, the British equivalent of a pink slip.
"Boris asked me to give you this," the man could be heard saying to May. Identified later as a comedian named Simon Brodkin, also known as Lee Nelson, the man said the paper was signed by Boris Johnson, May's foreign secretary.
Johnson had been seen as undermining May before the annual conference by staking out a tougher position on the U.K.'s plans to leave the European Union, known as Brexit. A former London mayor, Johnson is widely thought to want to replace May.
After receiving the paper, May fell into a series of coughing fits that dogged her for the rest of her speech. She drank glass after glass of water. Chancellor Philip Hammond, essentially the U.K.'s treasury secretary, stepped up from the audience and handed her a throat lozenge.
At times, May's voice fell to a whisper.
But even as she soldiered on, letters from the party's slogan – "Building A Country That Works for Everyone" —- fell off the wall behind her, making it read "Building A Country That Works Or Everyon."
The scene might have seemed comic had it not been so excruciating to watch.
